More news from Bill Newton Dunn MEP

12.36.00pm GMT Mon 15th Feb 2010

1) The new Commission has now been voted into office by MEPs and will serve until October 2014 as the leaders of Europe's executive body. Liberals have 8 out of the 27 portfolios, a very strong share for us. Read on:

2) If you want to follow voting patterns in the parliament, Votewatch.eu is an excellent website. In the first six months since the European elections in June 2009, you would see that the Liberal MEP group wins more votes than any other! Votewatch.eu uses the European Parliament's own attendance, voting and activity data - available through the Parliament's official documents - to give a full overview of MEP activities, broken down by nationality, national political party and European party grouping.

The following link shows how MEPs voted for the inauguration of the new Commissioners http://www.votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=320&lang=en

3) Greece is paying the price for not living up to its promises. When it abandoned the drachma currency and joined the euro, it undertook to have German-style discipline in the running of its economy (instead of bribery, lying, laxity etc). But successive governments did no such thing. So now, Greece will be obliged by the EU to accept discipline. It will be painful but in the long-run it will benefit the Greek people.

Britain, by staying out of the euro, refused to run its economy in a disciplined way : and now we have huge government debts and our international credit rating is on the verge of being downgraded.

Yes, it is a crisis for Europe. The good news is that "Europe" normally advances during a crisis - because, when there is no problem, national leaders take no action.

Out of this will come a stronger more cohesive Europe, a little better equipped to deal with world-scale problems together.

*********************************************************************************